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Monday, June 30, 2008

Sur la Table cooking class: what a joke

"i could have taught this class"

-my wife

So first off, thank you to my brother and sister in law for what should have been the perfect gift; a cooking class. Sur La Table is a pretty capable store but the class was a sham. We picked "Sicily Date night" and were, well, excited, about learning to cook Italian food. What we got was two hacks in chef's coats and a couple recipes pulled from the world wide web. At the beginning of the class, the chef goes "be sure to read the whole recipe, and be familiar with all the steps". What that really meant is "I dont what youre making, so figure it out cuz im a hack".

So here is me making some sauce. We pureed tomatoes and had a TON of liquid in the pan. I ask the chef - "uh, is this supposed to be so watery?" He is like "yeah, well, let me see the recipe, uh, wow, huh."

The sauce was not bad actually, we started out with some shallot and anchovies in the pan, added the puree and just took some time to reduce the liquid. Unfortunately the finished pasta also included bread crumbs that were "toasted" also known as "burnt" and looked a lot like this -

This pasta was ultimately undone by the burnt toast topping. The noodles were cooked a perfect "al dente" but eating this dish was like licking a toaster.

So yeah, chicken can be boring, especially when its baked. But when the oven is not working properly you get rubbery skin AND dry chicken. Awesome.

This dish was the most interesting one of the night . . . till I tasted it. Squid was stuffed then simmered in a tomato sauce. The squid itself was alright but the stuffing was more like chewing gum.

CONCLUSION:

So if anyone says "lets take a cooking class at Sur La Table?" Save yourself the money and just go eat at Sbarros - its better food.

About Me

I'm an Urban Foodie Sherpa whose exploits have landed me in Black Book Magazine's LA dining guide, producing $24 in 24 hours and Thanksgiving Live! for Food Network and developing new shows for Alton Brown and Simon Majumdar. But my real food claim to fame is being the Chong to Food Network's Cheech: Jeff Mauro, Sandwich King and winner of Food Network Star season 7. Before Epic Meal time, there was Chef Jeff and Ali - you tube it.